NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Yankees placed starting pitcher Carlos Rodón on the 15-day injured list due to left elbow inflammation, nearly two months into his return from offseason elbow surgery.
The Yankees made the move Friday, retroactive to Tuesday. On Sunday, Rodón allowed two runs and one hit in five innings in a 5-4, 10-inning loss at Boston. The 33-year-old left-hander's average velocity on his fastball, changeup, slider and sinker against the Red Sox were slightly down when he threw 55 of 96 pitches for strikes.
Putting Rodón on the injured list was one of four moves the Yankees made before opening a three-game series with Minnesota. New York is mired in a seven-game skid, it's worst since losing nine straight in Aug. 2023.
Rodón went for an MRI after feeling pain while playing catch on Wednesday. The MRI showed inflammation. He will have a platelet-rich plasma injection, and will not throw for a few days or a week.
“It’s kind of like off and on the last couple of weeks," Rodón said. “Just trying to come back throughout the week, it hasn’t been agreeing with me. So the recovery’s been not so great over the last few weeks, but still out there, got to pitch which was great, but this week up it caught up."
Rodon was scheduled to start Saturday. The Yankees did not announce who would replace him.
The Yankees also activated third baseman Ryan McMahon and center fielder Trent Grisham from the IL, while optioning utilityman Oswaldo Cabrera to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre
Rodón is 4-2 with a 3.30 ERA in nine starts since returning from the IL on May 10. He struggled with command in his first three starts and is 4-0 with a 2.97 ERA in his last six outings.
“I think he's one of the guys just struggling recovering in between and then finally getting to a point where (he said), let's go get this thing checked out,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Obviously good news with the ligament, that was encouraging. He's got some inflammation in there and that's going to cost him a little bit of time.”
Rodón had surgery Oct. 15 to remove loose bodies in his left elbow and shave a bone spur. He then had a setback in late March when he felt tightness in his right hamstring while throwing at the Yankees’ Florida complex.
He was 18-9 with a 3.09 ERA last season despite an ailing arm. His four-seam fastball velocity, which averaged 95.3 mph in his first season with the Yankees, was 94.4 mph in the first half last year and dropped to 93.8 mph in the second half.
Rodón is 97-74 with a 3.72 ERA in 12 major league seasons, including 41-28 since signing a $162 million, six-year contract with the Yankees in December 2023.
New York has yet to have Rodón, Gerrit Cole and Max Fried healthy at the same time. Cole missed last season following elbow reconstructive surgery and returned nine days after Fried exited a start in Baltimore with a bone bruise in his left elbow.
Fried faced hitters for the first time Tuesday and is expected to do so again on Sunday.
Grisham returned after missing 18 games with a strained right hamstring sustained running to second in Toronto in June 12. He is hitting .232 with eight homers and 35 RBIs in 66 games. He hit safely in 10 straight games before getting hurt.
McMahon was activated after missing 11 games with a throat infection. In his first full season with the Yankees after being acquired from Colorado in July, McMahon is hitting .210 with eight homers and 23 RBIs.
Cabrera went hitless in nine at-bats in his return to the Yankees after fracturing his left ankle on a slide at home in Seattle in May 2025.
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New York Yankees' Carlos Rodón follows through on a pitch to a Boston Red Sox batter in the first inning of a baseball game, Sunday, June 28, 2026, in Boston. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The fallout from Venezuela's powerful twin quakes has evolved into a major test for acting President Delcy Rodríguez, sending her scrambling to prevent the humanitarian disaster from becoming a political one as her mandate as interim leader expires Friday.
A day after Rodríguez angrily defended the competence of her government's relief effort at her first news conference since the June 24 disaster, her main rival, exiled Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado, issued her own appeal.
Machado on Friday argued that the government's quake response exposed its critical weaknesses and that she should return to Venezuela to help "the transition process, especially after the tragedy.”
"My presence stabilizes the situation; it is part of the organizing forces that the country needs at a time when the total absence of the state has become evident," Machado said, referring to widespread criticism of the government’s earthquake response as slow and disorganized. “The country needs figures it can trust.” She spoke to reporters from Panama.
The quakes have killed 2,645 people and injured over 12,500 others, according tallies released Friday by the government. Machado's opposition movement has set up an online database to locate the missing — a list of 36,000 people as of Friday. The party has mobilized volunteers to collect donations in Venezuela and solicited aid from the country's vast diaspora.
Machado was barred from running in a 2024 presidential election in which President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory. Vote tallies that the opposition collected from voting machines used in the election showed that the candidate Machado endorsed, Edmundo González, beat Maduro by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
When the earthquakes hit, Machado saw an opening to return home for the first time after fleeing in December to accept a Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. Ever since the United States captured Maduro in a brazen military operation in January, Machado has been seeking a comeback and calling for a democratic transition.
But the Trump administration has thrown its support behind Rodríguez since Maduro's ouster, praising her business-friendly reforms of the country’s lucrative oil sector.
Two senior U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to disclose private diplomatic discussions, told The Associated Press that the Trump administration has grown frustrated with Machado and dissuaded her from returning to Venezuela in the aftermath of the earthquakes.
One official said that Machado had sought assistance from Washington for ferrying her to Venezuela from the Caribbean island of Curaçao and also from Panama.
The second official said the U.S. suspected she wanted to return to lead protests against Rodríguez and push for political change at a time when the focus should be on quake recovery. This official added that the Trump administration could not prevent Machado's return but was not in a position to facilitate it.
Upon learning of Machado’s plans, Rodríguez shut down commercial air traffic into Caracas, the U.S. official said. Those canceled flights were set to bring hundreds of relief workers to assist with earthquake recovery efforts, the official said.
Seemingly concerned that anger over the earthquake response could jeopardize her leadership, Rodríguez on Thursday blamed any criticism of the government on what she called “narratives manufactured in propaganda laboratories."
She claimed that rescue crews deployed immediately with adequate equipment to disaster zones — contrary to complaints by residents that they were left alone to search for their loved ones without official teams or heavy machinery for the first 48 hours.
“Those propaganda operations, driven by partisan political interests, are despicable,” she said. “We did not wait one day, two days or three days. We activated immediately.”
Rodríguez went on to say that thousands of civil and military rescue workers as well as 11 international field hospitals had been deployed to quake-affected areas, adding that the government had approved the creation of a fund to receive donations for reconstruction.
On Friday, state-run media broadcast her visiting Hernán Alberto Gil Flores, a 43-year-old security guard pried from a collapsed basement after surviving nearly eight days under the rubble, in his hospital bed. His dramatic rescue Thursday served as a rare bright spot in the days since the earthquakes.
Under Venezuela’s constitution, temporary absences are to be filled by the vice president — which was Rodríguez’s former role under Maduro — for up to 90 days, after which they can be extended by the national assembly for an additional 90 days.
On Friday, that 180-day interim period expired. There was no immediate comment from authorities on what, if anything, they would do in response to the expiration of Rodríguez’s mandate.
The National Assembly, controlled by Rodríguez’s party, can trigger a snap election if lawmakers declare the post permanently vacant.
International organizations and governments, including the U.S., have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency relief aid to stave off a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe in Venezuela. With infrastructure and sewer systems damaged, aid workers are scrambling to prevent the spread of disease through contaminated water.
But nine days after the quakes, the scale of human suffering is still coming into focus.
“We know that there are still dead bodies under the collapsed buildings, and it's difficult to give a number on this, but several thousands for sure,” said Andreas Spaett, the Venezuela country coordinator for international aid group Doctors Without Borders. “I do believe this is one of the major natural catastrophes in the history of humanity.”
DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodríguez speaks during a press conference addressing the government's response to the back-to-back earthquakes in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Pedro Mattey)
A man stands atop a mountain of rubble three days after twin earthquakes struck, in La Guaira, Venezuela, Saturday, June 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
